Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
And to both of them, “What are your plans for bringing me up? Am I to
spend my childhood days in factories or mills, or am I to have the
opportunities offered by an intelligent, healthy, family life? I am
unusually gifted,” the baby might add. “Do you know how to develop my
talents? What sort of society have you made for the fullest expression
of my genius?”
All babies came back to the practical question, “How many children have
you already?”
“Eight.”
“How much are you earning?”
“Ten dollars a week.”
“And living in two rooms, you say? No, thank you. Next, please.”
I was trying to make people think in order that they might act. My part
was to give them the facts and then, when they asked what they should do
about them, suggest concrete programs for leagues and clinics. Many
women had far more executive and administrative experience than I, and I
still expected them to carry on where I left off so that I might be free
to return to Europe.
My hopes seemed well-founded when many of the Pittsburgh audience waited
afterward to request help in organizing themselves. Thus the first state
birth control league was formed. This and all subsequent ones I referred
to Mrs. Dennett’s National Birth Control League to be under its future
direction.
That meeting had been held under the sponsorship of Mrs. Enoch Raugh, a
philanthropist of great courage. In the early days almost everywhere I
went the subject of birth control was one likely to make conspicuous
those who identified themselves with it. Average well-to-do persons
hesitated except for the Jewish leaders in civic affairs, who, as soon
as they were personally convinced, showed no reluctance in aligning
themselves publicly.
Not so did Chicago respond. Some members of the powerful Women’s City
Club had privately asked me to speak, but when the matter was brought up
before their board, the unofficial invitation was officially canceled.
Here again were conservatives enjoying the benefits of birth control for
themselves but unwilling to endorse it for the less fortunate of their
sex. When they did not listen, I tried to reach the women of the
stockyards directly.
So many hundreds of letters had come to me—not only in English, but also
in Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, and Yiddish—clamoring for information,
that I had every reason to suppose what I had to say was going to be
welcome on Halsted Street. I was incredulous when I met an unforeseen
resistance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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